Mysterious Martial Arts: The Record of the Swordsman

Chapter 334 Mo Xian Lang Huan is called a blessed land

Chapter 334 Mo Xian Lang Huan is called a blessed land

"...The Chronicles of Langhuan?"

The Sanqing Hall was unlit, with only a few candle flames flickering before the statues, casting a dim light on Jiang Wen's face as he stroked the manuscript. He stared at the old paper with its still-present handwriting, a look of sudden realization on his face.

"Lang" refers to beautiful non-jade gemstones, often in the form of small, granular pieces. "Langhuan" means a collection of isolated non-jade gemstones, implying a place where many books are treasured.

This article in the old manuscript is not only the opening piece of the ancient book "Langhuan Ji", but also the theme that highlights the main points. The book was originally attributed to Yi Shizhen of the Yuan Dynasty, but this person is not recorded in official history. His birth, death, place of origin, and life are all unknown. Moreover, he is not listed in any official or private bibliographies of the Yuan Dynasty. He only began to circulate in the late Ming Dynasty, so it was obviously just an alias.

"'Hidden is real'? That goes perfectly with 'Really hidden'."

Jiang Wen spoke in a language that the Holy Mother of the Red Lotus could not understand, because at this moment, only he could understand what was to come.

The story of "Langhuan Ji" later evolved into the term "Langhuan Fudi," which became the martial arts paradise of the Xiaoyao Sect in Jin Yong's novels. In the book, several generations of leaders of the Wuliang Sword Sect were obsessed with the profound martial arts behind the "sword dance" reflected on the Wuliang Jade Wall in Langhuan Fudi. They neglected their own martial arts and sword techniques, even at the cost of their lives, but ultimately they gained nothing from the truth behind it.

However, before Jin Yong, the person who made the name "Langhuan" most famous was Zhang Dai, who was renting a place called Kuaiyuan at the foot of Longshan Mountain. He probably hasn't written "Langhuan Fudi Ji" yet, which transforms Langhuan Fudi into a virtual place that carries scattered documents. It was only after him that the name "Langhuan" frequently appeared in the writings of Qing Dynasty literati.

In Jiang Wen's view, even though the Jiajing edition of the Jianning Prefecture Gazetteer confidently records that Zhang Hua served as an official in Jian'an County before he rose to prominence in the early Jin Dynasty, this story is still full of errors and omissions.

First of all, Zhang Hua served in Cao Wei. According to the recommendation system, he was recommended by Xianyu Si, the governor of Yuyang, to serve as Taichang Boshi. He was already well-known from the start. How could he have been unknown at the beginning of Jin? And how could he have come to Min, which was under Sun Quan's control, to serve as a penniless official? Did he think that the King of Wu of Wei was so easy to talk to?

On the contrary, after the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, Zhang Hua appointed Lei Huan, who was on good terms with him, as the magistrate of Fengcheng. In the old prison of Fengcheng, the two famous swords, Longquan and Tai'a, were unearthed. Later, Lei Huan's son became "Jian'an Congshi" (a military officer in Jian'an). When he passed through Yanjin, his sword fell into the water, and the two swords disappeared from the world again...

“Zhang Hua and Lei Huan are hiding countless secrets. Their traces were found in Zhanlu Mountain last time. Although the stories circulating here were compiled by later generations, we should be very cautious if there is even the slightest trace of their origin.”

Jiang Wen wasn't afraid that Wuyi Mountain truly possessed a blessed land full of martial arts, but he was afraid that it might harbor something more terrifying and deadly than martial arts. As long as the source wasn't found out, he had to proceed cautiously and steadily.

The Crimson Lotus Saintess nodded, "This was also due to my oversight; I didn't expect Chong'an to have such a hidden danger. Does Sect Leader Jiang have any thoughts on this?"

Jiang Wen took off his sword and flicked it lightly. The sound of a dragon's roar immediately resounded throughout the empty hall. Looking at the smiling statue of the Three Pure Ones with lowered eyes, he went through the clues again.

It all started with three disciples of the Rattan Shield Sect.

The three men, who had been robbing graves and acting suspiciously, were eventually murdered and their bodies burned in an abandoned kiln outside Sanliting. However, Jiang Wen's examination revealed that one of the three was the murderer, who killed the man with exceptional swordsmanship and then committed suicide by self-immolation, as if to destroy all traces. A poem inscribed with "Lao Danliang is not dead" was found at the address.

Later, on his way, Master Ji Po encountered a madman from the Tengpai Sect who unleashed a strange and powerful palm technique, killing several people before being captured by Master Ji Po. However, the madman then committed suicide. His disciples said that before his death, he had encountered a ghost at Jade Maiden Peak, where Jiang Wen later discovered a stone inscription that read "Lao Dan is not dead." However, his residence had been destroyed, leaving no other clues.

Finally, Zhou Long suddenly disappeared, descending into a mad killing spree. According to him, he first encountered a monster with a beast's head and a human body. After waking up, his martial arts skills greatly increased, and he killed Gu Jinbiao, one of the Six Demons of Guandong, and several other martial arts figures who happened to encounter him. He was then trapped by the Six Ding Goddess and surrendered under the influence of the Life and Death Talisman. There are currently no other clues.

So it seems that the underlying theme is still "Lao Dan is not dead." However, Jiang Wen couldn't imagine how this theme could lead to murder. Could it be that there are gods who can drive people mad by reciting their names? That god must be incredibly socially awkward.

This was the first time that something resembling the Xi Yi had stopped charging straight at Jiang Wen and instead appeared and disappeared stealthily, which made Jiang Wen have to be extra careful.

Jiang Wen sensed that there must be some unknown entity among them. The three seemed to be becoming increasingly lucid, their actions evolving from murder and self-immolation to fierce resistance, and finally even displaying the pride of experts, insisting on taking Jiang Wen's hidden weapon—it seemed they were in a process of gradual manifestation…

"The most important clue at present seems to be left by this Sang Yue. This person is indeed arrogant and conceited. I always feel that he is subtly selecting his audience and disdains to associate with ordinary people."

"Langhuan Ji" is a collection of fables he meticulously compiled. The entire book is filled with all sorts of absurd rumors. Qian Xiyan, his fellow townsman in the Ming Dynasty, concluded in "Xixia" that the book was a forgery by Sang Yue, which clearly shows that he had some understanding of Sang Yue's character.

The Holy Mother of the Red Lotus just produced a bill showing that Sang Yue's collection of essays, "Si Xuan Ji," published in the bookstore had very few buyers and resulted in a huge loss. On the contrary, his later reissue, "Lang Huan Ji," became a bestseller and brought in a lot of profit. Isn't this a kind of dark humor that the world played on him?

To understand this opening story, one must grasp the meaning behind it.

The stories mention “Sanfen”, “Jiuqiu”, “Lianshan”, “Guicang”, “Taowu”, and “Chunqiu”, all of which are ancient book titles. However, except for “Chunqiu”, all of them have been lost, leaving only the titles. Later generations can only understand and speculate on their contents based on the titles and records.

Throughout history, there have been numerous instances of books being destroyed due to natural disasters or man-made calamities. Historians often refer to the largest-scale destructions of these books as "book calamities."

The term "book calamity" was first proposed by Niu Hong of the Sui Dynasty. He believed that before the Sui Dynasty, there were five major book calamities: the first was the burning of books by Qin Shi Huang; the second was the chaos caused by Wang Mang at the end of the Western Han Dynasty; the third was the relocation of the capital by Dong Zhuo with Emperor Xian of Han at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty; the fourth was the chaos caused by Liu and Shi at the end of the Western Jin Dynasty; and the fifth was the attack on Jiangling by the Western Wei at the end of the Southern Liang Dynasty, during which Emperor Yuan of Liang burned 140,000 volumes of books.

These five calamities are known as the "First Five Calamities," and later, Hu Yinglin of the Ming Dynasty added the "Later Five Calamities": the chaos at the end of the Sui Dynasty, the An Lushan Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, the war at the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Jingkang Incident in the Northern Song Dynasty, and the Shaoxing Disaster in the Southern Song Dynasty.

However, Jiang Wen could only say that they were still too naive and could not have guessed that there would be such cruel methods as literary inquisitions and the compilation of the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) later on.

However, it can be seen that most of these book destructions were caused by war. Since the central government in ancient times would collect books and store them in a special institution in the capital, once a war broke out to change dynasties, these books stored in a centralized location were very easy to be destroyed as the war spread.

However, there has indeed been a special case in history where, against the backdrop of a large number of missing pre-Qin documents, documents appeared on a large scale, forming a rare and serendipitous cultural event...

During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Jin Dynasty, when Zhang Hua lived, the Book of Jin, Annals of Emperor Wu, clearly records: "The people of Ji County were not allowed to dig up the tomb of King Xiang of Wei. They obtained more than 100,000 words of ancient books in small seal script on bamboo slips, which were stored in the secret archives."

The excavation of this batch of bamboo slips from Jizhong brought some pre-Qin documents back to light. In particular, a large number of ancient books written in tadpole script were discovered in the tomb of King Xiang of Wei. The court sent scholars such as Xun Xu and Shu Xi to sort them out for many years, and more than ten kinds of documents were sorted out, including famous books such as "The Biography of King Mu" and "Bamboo Annals".

Later, in the fifth year of the reign of Emperor Gao Wei of the Later Qi dynasty, the people of Pengcheng opened the tomb of Xiang Yu's concubine and unearthed a large number of bamboo slips, the most famous of which were the "Xiang Yu's concubine tomb" versions of the "Tao Te Ching" and the "Classic of Filial Piety".

Therefore, Jiang Wen suspected that the "Langhuan Paradise" that Sang Yue had alluded to was not a paradise at all, but rather an ancient tomb underground!

"When we arrived at the same place, a door suddenly appeared in the big rock, leading Hua in a few steps." This is because the cliff tombs of the Han Dynasty used the mountain as the mound, such as the Guishan Han Tomb and the Zhongshan Jingwang Tomb, which formed the pattern of "using the mountain as the mound", with some tomb chambers having an area of ​​more than 100 square meters.

"The only room is a tall building, sealed very tightly, and guarded by two dogs." This means that after entering the main burial chamber, there are dragon-shaped tomb guardian beasts placed outside the tomb passage. Since the shape of dragons in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties is similar to that of dogs, the immortals specifically referred to it as "this is a dragon."

When Zhang Hua longed to stay and study in this place, the immortal laughed and said, "You are foolish. How can this place be rented?" He then ordered a boy to escort him away. This was because the ground beneath the tomb was filled with foul air, and living people could not survive there for long. Even tomb raiders had to enter in batches to steal from it.

And this little child is even more of a standard feature of ancient tomb raiding. Tomb raiding gangs had a clear division of labor. Not only did strong and powerful adult men dig the tomb and transport the stolen goods, but they also needed a short accomplice or even a child to go in and search for treasure, so that they could pass through those narrow paths that ordinary people could not pass.

Finally, according to Zhang Hua's description, "As soon as he came out, the door suddenly closed by itself. Hua looked back and saw that weeds and vines were growing around the stone, and the moss on the stone was completely seamless." This does not mean that an immortal restored this place, but that the ancient books and collections in the tomb had not been fully excavated before the tomb passage collapsed completely, and the remaining contents were completely hidden from the light of day.

Jiang Wen didn't know where the "Langhuan Paradise" that Sang Yue was referring to was located, nor did he know what secret Zhang Hua had or his own personal experience. But since the clues were there, Jiang Wen didn't need to bother with them.

"Since Sang Yue has made the traces so obvious, let's go, Holy Mother."

The Holy Mother of the Red Lotus paused for a moment, then asked, "Where are you going?"

Jiang Wen didn't speak, but took three sticks of sandalwood, lit them, and respectfully placed them in front of the statue of the Three Pure Ones.

As the wisps of ethereal blue smoke rose into the vast void, it seemed to carry away human desires and vanish from the mortal realm, for blessings would soon descend upon the world.

"Go dig up the grave."

………………

In the desolate valley outside Sanliting, the Straw Sandal Immortal Pagoda has stood in the mountain winds for hundreds of years. If it weren't for the later reinforcement and repairs, the pagoda would have already been half-collapsed. The mottled bricks of the pagoda are riddled with pits from the wind and rain, but the blue stone base clings firmly to the mountain soil, remaining unmoved.

When Jiang Wen arrived with two hired laborers from the foot of the mountain, armed with shovels and picks, to dig the foundation of the tower, the evening mist was just beginning to rise from the mountain stream. The damp, cold wind, carrying the pungent smell of grass, wood, and decaying earth, stung their faces with a bone-chilling cold.

"Master, won't digging here offend the immortals?" Although the laborer had been bribed with a large sum of money, he was still somewhat uneasy.

Jiang Wen waved his hand and said, "It's alright, the immortal who guided me here also does this kind of work." Sang Yue was known for his unrestrained and eccentric theories and his self-important and eccentric personality. Jiang Wen never expected that he would eventually be connected with the legal channel.

After calming him down a bit, he ordered his men to clear away the weeds and vines around the pagoda, and then to dig down along the cracks in the stone slabs.

The first shovel strike wasn't the compact native rock and soil of Wuyi Mountain, but rather loose, mottled rammed earth, a mixture of reddish-brown, yellowish-black, and mixed with broken bricks and pottery shards. The deeper you dug, the darker the soil became, and it even faintly exuded a musty, stale smell that seemed to have been isolated by time.

As the soil was excavated, various objects gradually emerged. Among them, a half-piece of celadon porcelain with printed patterns was embedded, along with a tomb brick with rope patterns. He immediately ordered the laborers to clean it by hand and move it carefully. After removing the stone slabs and rammed earth under the pagoda base layer by layer, a Northern Song Dynasty brick chamber tomb buried deep underground was revealed to everyone.

This is a rectangular single-chambered vaulted tomb, the most common type of tomb built in Fujian during the Northern Song Dynasty. The blue bricks used to build the tomb have the typical form of the mid-Northern Song Dynasty. The characters "Tiansheng 4th year" molded on the side of the brick are clearly visible. However, some other bricks are obviously later than this brick, suggesting that the tomb has also been repaired.

The tomb door was sealed with layers of blue bricks. The moment the brick seal was pried open, a chilling aura, carrying a faint, indescribable smell of burnt food, rushed out, instantly overpowering the scent of grass and trees in the mountains.

"You should stay away for now. The foul and poisonous air in the tomb is extremely strong. Wait until it dissipates before approaching."

While instructing the laborers to take cover, Jiang Wen himself activated the miasma-avoiding method of the "Sutra of the Awakening of the Samadhi of Desire" and entered it alone.

The tomb chamber was not large, and the blue bricks on the four walls had long been stained black by the dampness of a thousand years. Scattered on the ground were several celadon bowls made in local kilns in Fujian and a bronze mirror with intertwined branches, which were common burial objects in the tombs of gentry and commoners in Fujian during the Northern Song Dynasty.

But what truly sends chills down your spine isn't the eerie layout of the ancient tomb beneath the pagoda, but rather the burial area in the very center of the tomb chamber—

There were no complete coffins here, only dozens of human bones scattered on the coffin bed, seemingly including men, women, and children, and each bone bore shocking marks of chopping, chiseling, and burning.

Jiang Wen moved closer without hesitation, wanting to see the charred bones clearly.

Most of the bones were carbonized and blackened, with cracks formed by high-temperature burning on the bone walls. The ends of the long bones of the limbs showed obvious signs of shrinkage and deformation due to heat. Most of the slender finger and toe bones were burned to a crisp and broken state, and many were even melted into charred fragments. No wonder the people who collected the remains could not bury them separately and could only put them into the ground as a whole.

He crouched down, his fingertips brushing against the blue bricks paving the bottom of the tomb, then touching the remaining fragments of the coffin bed planks beside him, his doubts growing stronger.

The blue bricks, burial porcelain, and even fragments of coffins in these tombs all naturally decayed in the damp underground environment of Fujian over hundreds of years, without any trace of fire or even a trace of soot.

This means that these remains were not burned in the tomb, but were burned to ashes before burial.

The Holy Mother of the Red Lotus suddenly spoke up: "Sect Leader Jiang, it is said that during the Song Dynasty, a group of reclusive martial arts masters were targeted by their enemies. In the end, the villains not only slaughtered their entire families, but also set fire to their manor and razed it to the ground."

She pondered for a moment, then pointed to some rusty fragments scattered in the tomb and said sadly, "It seems this is where they were buried. The people who built the tomb even erected a Buddhist banner to help the wronged souls pass on. It's just a pity that the locals spread rumors and it turned out to be a straw sandal pagoda."

Jiang Wen nodded slightly. This clue was indeed worth pondering. However, he still didn't understand the meaning of the clue left by Sang Yue. Could it be that these former Song Dynasty masters were all Taoist masters, which was why they left behind the inscription "Lao Dan is immortal"?

The people who built the tomb even erected a pagoda on top of them. What if they were killed by Buddhist forces? That would be too hellish.

Jiang Wen muttered to himself, "The mysterious master hidden deep in the mountains turned into a pile of charred bones hundreds of years ago. Could it really be a vengeful spirit coming to the mortal world to claim a life?"

Jiang Wen had always been skeptical of the idea of ​​ghosts, but faced with this situation today, he couldn't help but doubt his own judgment.

The torchlight flickered on the tomb walls, illuminating the charred and twisted bones as if they were baring their fangs and claws. Just as Jiang Wen was pondering, shouts and clamor for battle came from Sanliting not far away, carried by the wind to Jiang Wen's location. He could also hear intermittently the words "Taoist priest" and "thief".

Jiang Wen hurriedly ordered the laborers to seal the tomb chamber first, then cover it with a layer of soil, and then immediately set off to see what trouble had arisen at Sanliting.

At this moment, a person rushed over in a hurry, shouting at Jiang Wen as he ran.

"Sect Leader Jiang, come quickly and uphold justice! We've caught the thieves from Wudang!!"